Abstract

The 20 international artists featured in UnSpooling – Artists & Cinema, present current reflections and interpretations of cinema and new possibilities of future cinematic production, spectacle and storytelling. The research underpinning the exhibiton explored how in the age of the digital expansion into the possibilities of what cinema can be, artists are returning to analogue techologies and possibilites, to imagine future and further possiblities for the cinematic.The exhibition was co-curated by myself and Dave Griffiths as an extension of research arising from our artistic practices. This expands on a recurring artistic urge to sample film, first echoed in the makeshift cinema-going activities of Surrealists André Breton and Jacques Vaché. This exhibition presents unexpected models of the moving image and explores how something so intimate has become so pervasive, whether picking it apart, creating personal archives or playfully nodding to its forms and characteristics. UnSpooling – Artists & Cinema, gathers a wide range of works that explore text, image, sound, chemistry, gesture and spoken word, through painting, drawing, film and video. The exhibition included 10 new comissioned artworks from 7 artists. This major exhibition seeks to re-imagine Cornerhouse Galleries and cinema building as a 'fourth cinema space' in which to review the relationship and concerns of art and cinema, presenting contemporary artists' current reflections and interpretations of its form. The exhibition was part of Abandon Normal Devices festival and was Cornerhouse galleries 25th Birthday celebratory exhibition. The exhibition was previewed in AN (Oct 2010) and Flux Magazine (Autumn 2010), The Guardian (2nd Oct. 2010) and The Times (2nd Oct. 2010) and was reviewed in Art Monthly (no 341).